Saturday 24 August 2013

Under the Sea Victoria Sponge

I'm afraid that I have a confession to make. I haven't yet watched an episode of the Great British Bake Off. But I do like baking, and I do like a challenge, which is why this new linky caught my eye. Jenny from Mummy Mishaps and Helen from The Crazy Kitchen have set a baking challenge to bloggers. The theme for each week is set by that week's Great British Bake Off episode, and this week it's Victoria Sponge and Angel Food Cake. To take part, we have to bake and blog a recipe inspired by the show.

Making an under the sea themed sponge cake

I'm pretty good at a basic sponge cake, if I do say so myself, and I use it as the basis of lots of different cakes. This week our summer theme day was Under The Sea, and so the children and I made an Under The Sea cake. The Victoria Sponge itself wasn't much of a challenge, but to make it a bit different I bought some ready made fondant icing, which I've never used before, and we used it to make some fish themed decorations for the cake.

Making an under the sea themed sponge cake

My Victoria Sponge recipe has been passed down from my Mum and it's very simple - 6oz margarine (I use Stork), 6oz caster sugar, 3 eggs and 6oz self-raising flour. To make enough butter icing to cover the top, middle and sides of the cake you need 75g butter, 175g icing sugar, food colouring and a small amount of milk. For this icing I also mixed in some glittery blue sprinkle things.

The decorations are made from the ready to roll icing, mixed with food colouring and cut out and decorated in the manner of playdough. I'm rather pleased with the result, it's not a traditionally pretty Victoria Sponge but it's fun, and I love the fact that the children helped to make it. It tasted great too!

Making an under the sea themed sponge cake

10 comments:

  1. you haven't watched GBBO? *gasp*
    you need to rectify that soon ;-)
    This cake looks great, I bet the kids loved making it.
    Thanks for joining in with the #GreatBloggersBakeOff

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I will certainly be watching it from this week and onwards!

      Delete
  2. i am so impressed that you decorated your cake with fondant because it make sis stand out from the other entries plus your children helped and they did such a wonderful job (better than I could do!).
    well done and keep it up!
    next weeks theme is bread
    thank you for linking up x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, I'm looking forward to next week and I have my bread recipe lined up, it's a new one for me so I hope that it works out!

      Delete
  3. Those little fish look great. I bet it tasted delicious too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, I was very lucky that we had a fish shaped cutter in our playdough set

      Delete
  4. I bet the kids loved helping to make this!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They did, it was like playdough, except that my daughter was delighted to find that I would actually allow her to eat it, and how tasty it was!

      Delete
  5. I love the idea of the GBloggersBO. I did something similar last year on my own , baking something from the show each week. This week I didn;t quite bake one of the recipes from the show because I had planned to do my monthly cupcake feature, but they are chocolate so have some connection to the showstopper round on the GBBO :) Love your vic sponge, and lovely to get the children involved - my toddler likes baking but his attention span isn't long enough to so anything too big!

    ReplyDelete
  6. you are such a creative lady. If i was to compare you to one of the real GBBO contestant you would be that lady that made the giant match box

    ReplyDelete

I love reading your comments!